Method and apparatus for classifying known specimens and media using spectral properties and identifying unknown specimens and media

Abstract

Method and apparatus for determining a metric for use in predicting properties of an unknown specimen belonging to a group of reference specimen electrical devices comprises application of a network analyzer for collecting impedance spectra for the reference specimens and determining centroids and thresholds for the group of reference specimens so that an unknown specimen may be confidently classified as a member of the reference group using the metric. If a trait is stored with the reference group of electrical device specimens, then, the trait may be predictably associated with the unknown specimen along with any traits identified with the unknown specimen associated with the reference group.

Description

[0001]This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12 / 823,303 filed Jun. 25, 2010 and claims priority to provisional U.S. Application Ser. No. 61 / 485,206 filed May 12, 2011, the entire disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference into the present application.[0002]This invention was made with U.S. Government support under contract W9113-09-C-0188 awarded by U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command / U.S. Army Forces Strategic Command. The U.S. Government has certain rights in the invention.TECHNICAL FIELD[0003]The technical field relates to a method and apparatus for classifying specimens and media using spectral properties and identifying unknown specimens and media having like spectral properties and, in particular, to the application of a spectral property database having one or more data values representative of spectral properties such as magnitude, phase or complex values sampled at discrete values of time, frequency, wavelength,...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The patent text describes a system that uses advanced technologies to analyze and search for information about objects. The system is based on the use of a database and a modeling and search capability that can quickly and accurately identify and match objects based on their properties. The system can also predict and estimate the properties and traits of new objects using the information collected from the database. The system is efficient and can access metadata about the objects, which helps to infer the point of origin for each new object. The technical effects of this system include improved efficiency, accuracy, and automation for forensic applications.

Problems solved by technology

For example, historically collected data for a process may trigger recognition of an irregularity in collected, expected data such that the imminent failure of a machine component may be detected before the component fails.

Birdwell and Moore recognize that when historical data are used to characterize behavior it is often not appropriate to model such behavior as a curve because too much information may be lost.

The limitations of the method disclosed by Birdwell and Moore are the difficulties inherent in the representation of regions or clusters obtained from classified or known spectra, and in the comparison of a spectrum to a region.

Birdwell and Moore offer an approach to representation of signals and portions of regions using interval arithmetic but do not address representation of the entire region in a manner that enables efficient comparison for large volumes of data.

Analysis of all 20,000 points may be time consuming and unneeded because initial investigations show that the similarity of two impedance curves can be determined by their general shape, which can be represented with a lot fewer measurements at selected frequencies.

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